


Phobia

by ellorgast



Series: Monster Socks! [7]
Category: Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon | Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon
Genre: Canon - Manga, Friendship, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-16
Updated: 2014-09-16
Packaged: 2018-02-17 14:15:51
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,728
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2312561
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ellorgast/pseuds/ellorgast
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A story about tattoos.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Phobia

It was not the design that was flawed. Its form was functional and appropriate; its execution aesthetically pleasing. It was symmetrical and balanced. It was subtle and inoffensive and suitable for all parties involved. They had gathered around its early incarnations with all the gravity that was required of world leaders, and through much deliberation, had reached a consensus. An atom bomb could not have been more carefully constructed.

Nor did he disagree on principle. Many people--many great, noble, distinguished people--had them. Many of these people lead long, rich lives, and though his life would be much, much longer, it did not make the choice regrettable.

He did not object to the location. It was well-lit and clean as any hospital, though perhaps most hospitals did not paint their walls red, complimented by black floor and furniture.

It was only when the artist produced an instrument of torture that had surely been forged in the fires of Mount Doom that Mamoru’s brain took a look at the choices it had made until this point and decided that none were more foolhardy than this. It promptly attempted to alert him to this fact by launching an emergency shutdown of all major facilities.

Mamoru was aware only of the fact that the red-walled room now felt like it had shrunk smaller than the average closet. A closet that was about to run out of air.

“Are you alright?” Kain’s voice was laced with concern, of course, but Mamoru thought there was far too little panic underscoring it, considering the stainless steel instrument that the artist was setting on the table. 

“Of course I am,” he answered, and that was a good sign, right, that he could still open his mouth and produce sounds that resembled words. He wasn’t about to hyperventilate at all. That pounding in his ears had nothing whatsoever to do with his pulse.

Sasha reclined easily in the recycled dentist’s chair that the artist had put him in, his shirt unbuttoned and hanging over the edges. His phoenix seemed to practically glow with oranges and reds and greens over his ribs. He was an old hand at this. “I told you. It’s not that bad. It’s like a bee sting.”

Mamoru’s throat was very dry. “That is not better.”

Neil grinned from the matching chair beside him. They had hired two artists at once to speed the process. “It helps if you think of other things. Like tits.”

Breasts could not have possibly been further from his mind. 

“If you don’t want to do this...” Kain had shifted close, perhaps intending to catch Mamoru if he fainted, which did not seem to be an unlikely outcome.

Mamoru forced his eyes away from the menacing weapons in the artists’ hands. He may have lost feeling in his toes. “No, I do. Really.” He reminded himself of why they were doing this. He reminded himself that he was not doing this alone. He reminded himself that he was someday going to rule over the entire planet, and he did not want to tell his royal great-grandchildren that he’d had to wait in the car with his head between his knees while his guard got manly tattoos.

And then the device in the artist’s hand made an unholy whirring noise like a dentist’s drill, and he considered that a tattoo would be setting a bad example for those great-grandchildren, anyway.

Jaden stared at him. “Dude, you dissected a pig last week. You’ve set and healed your own broken arm. You’ve shrugged off multiple stab wounds. How is this scary to you?”

He could not figure out why Sasha and Neil were not screaming in agony yet. “None of those things involve a needle being repeatedly inserted into your epidermis.”

“You know that’s not a thing that can actually kill you, right?”

“You never know.”

“That youma the other day was more deadly and it was made of jelly.”

“Jelly doesn’t have needles.”

Jaden's eyes drifted up to his left ear. "How did you get your ear pierced, though? I mean, really?"

Mamoru's fingers fumbled with the thin gold hoop in his ear. "I just... didn't think of that thing that they use to pierce your ears as having a needle in it. It's more like a... a hole puncher."

"You'd be okay with a big fat hole puncher going through you but not a needle?"

"I don't know, it just works, okay?"

"Can you think of the tattoo machine as a hole puncher?"

"No. I know it has a needle in it."

"You could pretend that it doesn't."

"But I know it does."

“Did I hear that right? You’re afraid of needles?” Neil did not seem to even notice the artist bent over his arm. Mamoru nearly felt sick when he glanced at the arm in question, because Neil had chosen the tender place on his inner forearm to receive his mark, which was far too close to the place where blood was drawn from. “How are you going to be a doctor and do injections and stuff?”

“It will not require,” Mamoru had to take a breath when he saw the mark beginning to take form on Sasha’s ribs, cradled among the phoenix’s feathers, “injecting myself.”

“Do you also pass out when you need to give blood samples?”

Mamoru said nothing. The last time a doctor had required blood from him was when he was hospitalized with Nehellenia’s curse, and he had therefore already been unconscious.

“You know they won’t ink you if you pass out, right?” Jaden looked him over as though he thought that Mamoru was considering doing such a thing for the fun of it.

“I’m not going to pass out.”

“Puking probably won’t fly either.”

“If you need to go outside...” Kain also seemed unconvinced that Mamoru was going to make it as far as the chair.

He smoothed down the front of his shirt. “No, really. I’m fine.”

When Sasha and Neil were finished (a small eternity later, in Mamoru’s mind), they fistbumped between the chairs while their respective artists taped bandages in place. 

Things became significantly noisier when Jaden’s turn came, because Sasha pulled up a stool beside him and together they sang the lyrics to old punk songs. Not because he needed distracting from the pain (although he flinched when the artist began her work, and she had called him “twitchy”), but because he would be unable to keep still for so long without something to hold his attention. He still found it difficult to remain still enough for the artist to brand his ankle, and frequently Sasha had to pause their singing to remind him to stop fidgeting.

Kain was stone-silent through their antics, staring vacantly up at the ceiling as though he had removed himself to another plane of existence entirely. The only clue that he was still awake to feel the mark growing in a place above his heart was the occasional tapping of two of his fingers in time with the singing beside him.

Neil pulled up a stool beside Mamoru. “You’re looking a bit green there, cowboy.”

“I’m fine. Don’t worry about it.”

“You don’t have to, bro. You could say no.”

“You did it.”

“Yeah,” the brunette carefully brushed his hand over the bandage. “And you know why I did. You don’t have to be part of this.”

“Yes I do.”

A second eternity passed before both Jaden and Kain were sitting up in their chairs, but the end of it seemed to come far too soon. Mamoru was not entirely certain of how he managed to walk to the chair without assistance.

When the artist laid out the little cup of black ink, he felt himself break out in a cold sweat.

Kain pulled up a stool beside him. Mamoru considered digging his fingers into Kain’s arm to brace himself, but they’d told him he had to relax every part of his body, or it would be worse. He thought that seemed sort of like asking a tiger with rabies to calm down.

The cold brush of an alcohol swab on his arm nearly made him leap out of the chair.

“Mamoru. Look at me.” Kain put a hand on his other arm. His guardian’s presence was always stilling, comforting. Maybe with him nearby, he could--

The artist picked up her torture device, and any tranquility he thought he could glean from Kain’s presence shattered instantly. There were needles in that thing. Mechanical needles, ready to dig into his skin over and over like he was nothing more than a scrap of fabric laid out on a sewing machine. 

Kain squeezed his arm. “Mamoru. I said, look at me.” 

It was probably only the force of Kain’s order that caused him to respond automatically, looking up into eyes the color of cloudy skies. Immediately he felt himself opening up to those grey eyes, the filters that he so carefully held between himself and the world giving way to their color. It was the color of stone walls encircling a courtyard, pillars casting midday shadows across the small pond that burbled beneath a willow tree. He knew that in the early mornings, when the mist from the pond was still among the willow branches, a pheasant made its visit, and woke the castle residents with its haunting cry. The pond had fish, he knew; little ones that he had tried to catch when he was young, but only so that he could see their shining scales in the shallow water of a goblet, before he released them back among their siblings, where they nibbled at algae and long tufts of grasses that leaned over the water’s edge.

Mamoru blinked as Kain sat back, and he felt something like a door between them slide neatly shut again. The artist was not holding her instrument anymore. She was holding out a small mirror for him to take. “You want to see it, don’t you?”

The skin of his upper arm was a red angry welt beneath the new mark it bore. A thin black circle, wrapping around two crossing bars. An emblem of old. The symbol of Earth.

Neil grinned as he slowly sat up. “That wasn’t so bad, was it? Was it worth the pain?”

Mamoru traced his fingers over the bandage. “Yeah. Worth it.”


End file.
